c r o s s+r o a d s

I blogged about "HR In The Eyes Of Her Stakeholders", a few days back to describe the HR mindset vis-a-vis her stakeholders. HR is often perceived as the "police" of the organization, procedure freak, protocol driven. Perceived also as responsible for most, if not all organizational bottlenecks, being reactive to every new situation that will arise.

Having in mind the HR Quadrant, the trend in the Philippines, I discussed the 4 Roles of HR, as follows:

1. Strategic Partner
2. Change Agent
3. Administrative Expert
4. Employee Champion

Item 1 & 2 deals with strategies and 3 & 4 with day to day activities, while 1 & 3 deals with systems and 2 & 4 with people.

While blog hoppin', I came across George’s Employment Blawg, where Atty. George Lenard is blogging about the April 24 article written by Dr. John Sullivan & Master Brunette at Erexchange.com. This is about the "3 New Roles" of HR Managers.

According to Dr. Sullivan, with the 3 new roles, HR and some leading organizations

"… are breaking with tradition — at least when it comes to talent management — establishing new functional structures that account for current labor market realities, and adding new proactive activities to the stable of HR services.

A growing number of organizations are leveraging the visibility currently being placed on the impending talent shortage/crisis by corporate leaders and growing the scope of talent management activities to include formalized processes, programs, and departments focusing on proactive management of the employment brand, retention, and workforce planning. These groundbreaking organizations are tearing down massive walls that years of political infighting have created between HR functions in order to develop entirely new HR structures where all deliverables are integrated to "strategically" manage the portfolio of talent that the organization can use to call upon to achieve both short- and long-term objectives."

The 3 new roles are:

• Workforce Planning
• Employment Branding
• Retention

In my opinion, these "new" roles can be categorized under the "Strategic Partner" of the HR Quadrant or the 4 Roles. Since emphasis is proactive planning, strategizing, and integrating all approaches in manpower forecasting, image building and loyalty.

Atty. George Lenard summarized the "3 new roles" as follows:

Basic responsibilities for the workforce planning role include:

Projecting the organization’s supply and demand for talent on a moving one-, three-, or five-year basis (timing dependent upon industry); Identifying gaps in projected supply and demand for talent and developing strategic and tactical plans to acquire the labor needed to meet objectives.

Basic responsibilities for the employment branding role include:

Developing and implementing an employment branding strategy that ensures key constituents continue to perceive the organization as an employer of choice, thereby simplifying talent retention, motivation, and attraction.

The major responsibilities for the Retention role include:

Overseeing the creation and deployment of tools and approaches on a case-by-case basis to ensure the retention of key employees.

These new roles addressed some major HR issues. With these, HR is breaking away from the compliance-driven, policing operations image that almost all stakeholders criticized. More than the administrative duty, there are other important HR roles to perform.

To read the blog entry of Atty. George Lenard, follow this link.

To read the article written by Dr. John Sullivan, go here.

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